by A. G. Henley
“Why did they take the children, Kai?” Peree asks.
“The Sisters live without men.” Her voice is bleak. “They gather girls from other groups to survive.”
We erupt with fresh cries.
“We will catch them!” Derain, Arika’s partner, says. “Can you lead us to where they attacked you?”
She says she can. Running feet pound out of the clearing.
“Kadee’s here,” Peree says to me. He places my hands in a smaller, softer pair, and his lips brush the top of my head. “I’m going ahead.”
“Peree—!” I don’t have time to tell him to be careful. He’s gone with the others.
Kadee, my natural mother, holds my arm as we run after the group, following footfalls and the sounds of parents calling their children’s names. We reach the path to the village, but rather than turning that way, we enter the forest ahead, pushing through the grasping arms of trees and bushes.
We stop in a clearing—the light brightens and I’m no longer surrounded by vegetation. Frightened voices flutter around me, birds flushed from their nests by a predator.
“Do you see anything?” I ask Kadee.
“Only the trees and our own people.” Her hand is icy on my arm.
A poisonous brew of dread and helplessness oozes through my body. I close my eyes and listen for any sound of the children.
“Which way did they go?” someone yells.
“Here,” a woman shouts in a quivery voice. “The bushes are crushed!”
Kadee pulls me in that direction. We crash into the woods again as people fall in behind us. Branches and brambles claw at me again, drawing stinging trails along my face and arms.
We move this way and that, following those in front. I’m jostled and jerked, but I can only think of Kora and the other children.
A battle cry pierces the air over our heads as if the trees themselves scream out. The voices are feminine and fierce. They aren’t the wails of the sick ones, the Scourge, but the same prickling feeling crawls along my scalp.
Those ahead of us shout warnings as what sounds like spears whistle past, hammering into the trunks of trees all around us. I freeze, my heart rocketing in my chest, waiting for the agonized screams of the injured.
“Back! Go back!” a man yells.
We all turn and run the way we came. People push and shove into Kadee and me, and in the confusion, I lose her and stumble. Another, larger hand grabs my arm, righting me.
“I’ve got you.”
Peree. I gasp, relieved to hear his voice. He puts my hand back in Kadee’s and positions himself behind us, probably to shield us, as we charge away with the rest. When we reach the clearing again, people begin to shout.
“Does anyone have a weapon?” Peree yells. “A bow? A knife? Anything?”
“No!” a man says. “Why would we be armed at a partnering ceremony?”
Why indeed? Few dangers lurk in Koolkuna. Because of the Myuna, the village’s pure, underground water source that supplies its water hole, we aren’t even exposed to the poison that creates the monstrous illusion of the Scourge.
“The armory!” A group of people sprint noisily from the clearing, heading toward the village to collect weapons.
“There were knives for the feast back at the Myuna. I’ll get them.” It’s Bear, my old Groundling friend. His voice is grim.
Peree touches my hand. “I’m going for my bow.” He tears away again.
Nerang’s voice rings out. He sounds as upset as I’ve ever heard him. “Amarina, Derain, Konol, track the guru. Stay far enough behind to be safe.”
Branches crack and leaves rip as bodies push into the trees, moving slower—more cautiously—this time.
“The rest of you remain here,” Nerang says. “Do not approach these intruders again. Their spears were warnings only. If they had wanted to kill us, they could have.”
“I am not standing around while my daughter is taken from under my nose by lorinyas!” a man shouts.
The forest swallows the sound of his running footsteps a moment later. Lorinyas. Strangers. That’s what we were to the anuna until recently.
“We cannot wait, Nerang,” a woman says. “We should go after the guru!”
“Of course we will. But we must have weapons to defend ourselves. You cannot help your guru if you are dead. Now, which of the children are missing besides Kora and Darel?”
Arika whimpers at the sound of her children’s names. My heart contracts with fear for Kora, my first companion in Koolkuna. I can feel her small hand as she led me around the village, gossiping about her people through the observations of her doll, Bega. Darel, her younger brother, is only four years old. They can’t be gone.
“My brother, Thrush.” Moon, the partner of Peree’s cousin, Petrel, sounds destroyed. Her newborn, Yani, howls. The baby’s name means hope in the anuna’s language. Hope feels far away now.
Exuberant and pesky Thrush reminded me so much of my own brother, Eland, when he was younger. Pain rips through me as I think of them, our brothers who only met once. One is dead. One is now missing.
The parents and guardians of the children say the names of their beloved. Seven in all were taken, five girls and two boys.
“And Frost.” I recognize Conda’s voice, one of the younger brothers of my Groundling tormentor—and protector—Moray. “But I don’t understand why they took her and not Arika.”
“Frost is still young enough to be trained in the Sisters’ ways,” Kai says, “and she’s pregnant. Her baby is even more valuable to them. If she has a girl, they can raise her as their own.”
“My baby?” Moray says. “I don’t think so.”
I wish I could say he was worried for Frost, too, the Lofty girl of about fifteen or sixteen who somehow got mixed up with him back home, but he’s only ever been concerned about their child. His baby. While Moray’s not my favorite, he doesn’t deserve this. No one does.
I hear Bear passing blades around. Others clatter into the clearing soon after, hopefully with more weapons. Peree and Petrel’s voices are among them.
“We’re going after them,” Peree says, touching my arm.
“I am, too,” Moray says.
Which means his brothers, Cuda and Conda, will follow. They seem to follow him everywhere. Right now, I’m glad. The group jogs off in the direction the Sisters took the children, and I send a silent prayer of protection after them.
Kadee and I stand with the rest of the villagers. Some cry softly, others wail. Still others argue, their voices crashing together like the waterfall meeting the Myuna. I find Moon and put my arms around her and Yani as they both sob. What else can I do? I’m desperate to look for Kora and the missing children, but I can’t move as fast as Peree and the others. I’d only hold them back. I don’t know the first tree or bush in this forest.
Kora, where are you?
“These Fire Sisters,” someone asks, “where do they come from?”
“Their home is called the Cloister.” Kai’s voice is hard, her words clipped.
“Where is it?” I ask.
“Many days’ walk through dangerous territory.” Her voice grows even colder and sharper when she speaks to me. “Along the River Restless.”
River? A stream runs out of Koolkuna from the Myuna, but I had no idea there was a river somewhere.
“We must find them before they get that far!” someone says.
“You won’t catch the Sisters if they don’t want to be caught.” Kai’s voice dips. Is she upset about the children, or are her memories painful? Both? It’s hard to tell with her. “And you’ll have no chance of getting them back if they reach the Cloister. Flames that never die protect the Sisters’ compound. High walls are guarded day and night. No one gets in or out unless they allow it.” She pauses. “They… they aren’t like the anuna. You can’t reason with them or talk them around. They’ll kill you if you try to take the guru back.”
I bite my lip, drawing blood, as people cry out.
“What of the boys?” Moon’s voice quavers. “You said they gather girls and have no men. What do they do with the boys they take?”
I hold her closer and rest a hand on Yani’s plump, velvety thigh, reassuring myself she’s safe. My pulse slows a bit in response.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see any boys in the Cloister,” Kai says. “Only girls and women.”
If Eland had survived, if he’d come to Koolkuna with us, he might have been taken with Thrush. I would have lost him anyway. Our world is so precarious. Why do I try to pretend otherwise? I sway on the edge of the dark well of guilt and grief I’ve often fallen into since my brother’s death.
People begin to shout at Nerang and at each other. My eyes fill with tears. Although we’ve only been in Koolkuna a short time, I’ve come to care deeply for the community—the people who live here and the place Peree and I hoped to call home.
“What can we do, Nerang?” The woman’s voice thrums with sorrow.
“Calm yourselves. Perhaps the others are already bringing the guru back to us. In the meantime, look around. We might find something of importance.”
Nerang’s probably buying time, giving us something to do, but standing here talking about the awfulness of the Sisters isn’t helping anyone. With a gentle squeeze, I let go of Moon. I may not be able to look for clues, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find any.
Dropping to one knee, I feel the ground, trampled under our feet. All I feel are the crushed remains of grass and flowers, their petals still soft but already wilting. If there’s anything else down here, it’s been smashed flat. I listen to the agitated voices of the anuna as they search… the breeze rattling leaves in the branches of trees around us… the song of one intrepid bird not driven off by the commotion. Breathing slow and deep, I sift the air as I might a handful of grain.
And there is something else.
One scent stands out. It’s like the smoke from a fire, only more abrasive, as if it were created by something other than burning wood. I realize it’s been needling my nose and throat; I just wasn’t paying attention.
“I smell something—” I start to say, but someone interrupts.
“Is this one of their feathers?” a man asks. The group goes silent.
“Yes,” Kai says.
“Arika.” Kadee speaks from a few paces away, regret in her voice. “I found Bega.”
Kora and Darel’s mother breaks down again. Kora would never willingly leave Bega behind. How much more can the poor woman take?
I reach out for the doll. Soft wood shavings escape into my palm from her lumpy body. I hold her to my nose. She smells dirty and mildewed, but under that, I detect the familiar scents of my young friend. Tears leak from my eyes.
When I hugged her, Kora’s thick, curly hair hinted of the spices of Arika’s cooking pot, the grassy meadows where she played with the other children, the water hole where she swam, the smoky allawah where she learned the stories of her people from Wirrim and Kadee, and her own cozy bed. All the sunny settings of her young life.
I bring Bega to Arika and hold her as she shakes with sobs. Rage courses through me. How can these women do this to us? Are they completely heartless?
“Nothing like this ever happened before the lorinyas came, Nerang,” the man who found the feather says. His voice sounds menacing. “They brought this ill luck to us.”
“We should never have taken them in,” a woman says.
I stiffen, and a shiver runs down my back. They mean us: Peree, me, the other Lofties and Groundlings.
“We didn’t cause this.” My voice stays even.
“How do we know that?” the man says. “Myall wears the same kind of feather.”
I clutch my hands together to keep them from shaking. “We found it in the woods back home. We didn’t know where it came from.”
“Maybe the Fire Sisters were there, watching you. Maybe they followed you here.” The woman’s words pulse with accusation.
“Through the caves?” Kadee asks. “The Sisters couldn’t have followed them that way without being seen.”
“Well, we had no trouble before the lorinyas arrived,” another man says. “It’s their fault!”
“Enough,” Nerang says. “We will not treat our new friends like criminals; it will not help bring the guru back.”
The shouts die down to grumbling, but the damage is done. I already feel sick about the children. Now I wonder if it could be our fault. My best friend Calli found that feather in the woods around our home; she gave it to me to give to Peree. Did the Sisters somehow follow us? Did we bring this terrible fate on Koolkuna?
People begin to pace as we wait, their feet swishing the grass, back and forth, back and forth. I sit with Arika, Moon, and Yani, gnawing my thumbnail, wracked with worry for Kora, Darel, Thrush, Frost, and the rest of the children. Wracked with guilt that we might be responsible. Wracked with a desire to do something.
“Kadee,” I murmur. “Didn’t the anuna already know about the Fire Sisters if they took Kai when she was young?”
“This is the first I’ve heard of them,” she says. “Kaiya wouldn’t speak of what happened to her. We knew she disappeared from the Myuna, and her father never came back from trying to find her. She was with the runa when she was discovered, and Nerang nursed her back to health. That’s all we know.”
Kadee told me before that Kai was one of the few people to survive living among the sick ones. What did it do to her? And what happened when she was with the Sisters?
I catch the sounds of people moving through the trees toward the clearing, and I jump to my feet. I allow myself a flash of hope, but from their slow steps and the silence of the anuna around me, I can tell they don’t have the children. Desperate for some kind of comfort, I clasp the wooden bird that glides at my throat, the pendant Peree carved for me as a sign of his devotion.
It’s a relief when he finally hugs me to him, smelling of salt and bitter sadness. He takes my hands in his, rubbing gently to warm them. I shouldn’t be this cold. It’s late in the summer, nearly fall, but the temperature is still mild in the afternoon. It’s the shock. The clearing feels weighted down with it.
“We lost them.” Derain’s voice buckles with grief. “They left one woman behind to fend us off with her arrows, and then she slipped away in the shadows of the branches, moving like the wind. We searched, but we couldn’t find them again.”
“Then we have no time to lose,” Nerang says. “A search party will leave as soon as possible. Who will go?”
There are a few declarations from the group. I hear Derain, and a woman’s high voice, like birdsong, that I think belongs to Amarina. I worked with her in the gardens. She sounds as breakable as a thin stalk of the maidengrass that grew around our water hole at home, but Kadee told me she’s a skilled tracker and woodswoman who can coax fire out of little more than a handful of damp kindling.
“My brothers and me are going for sure,” Moray growls. I don’t trust them much, but they’re tough and cunning. We need whoever can help bring Frost and the children home.
“I’ll go.” My voice is strong, decided. I feel better for saying the words.
Peree squeezes my shoulders. “I will, too.”
I’m afraid to enter an unfamiliar forest, chasing after a group of kidnapping warrior women. I’m no fighter.
But I want to go for Kora and her family. They were the first to befriend Peree and me when we washed up in Koolkuna, helpless as babies.
I want to go for Thrush, Moon, and Petrel. I know all too well how it feels to lose a brother.
I want to go for Frost. Pregnant and afraid, she risked her father, Osprey’s, rage to free Eland and me when we were trapped in the Lofty trees.
I want to go for Nerang, who saved our lives, and for the anuna, who took us in, even if some might unfairly blame us for this tragedy now.
And… I want to go for Eland. I couldn’t save him. I can still save these children.
Everyone has done so
much for us. How can I sit here, enjoying the protection and comforts they secured for us, hoping someone else will help?
I can’t.
I’ll go, and I’ll do whatever it takes to find Kora and the others and bring them home.
Purchase THE FIRE SISTERS (Brilliant Darkness, #3) on Amazon
* * *
The Brilliant Darkness series by A.G. Henley
Recommended Reading Order:
The Scourge (#1)
The Keeper: A Brilliant Darkness Story (#1.5)
The Defiance (#2)
The Gatherer: A Brilliant Darkness Story (#2.5)
The Fire Sisters (#3)
* * *
To be informed about upcoming book releases:
1) Sign up for my newsletter
2) Follow me on Facebook and Twitter.
If you enjoyed this book, please consider:
1) Posting a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or the like
2) Recommending to a friend
3) Lending to a friend (lending is enabled for this book)
Thank you so much for your support!
Aimee (A.G.) Henley
* * *
About the Author
A.G. Henley is the author of the BRILLIANT DARKNESS series. The first book in the series, THE SCOURGE, was a finalist for the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Award.
A.G. is also a clinical psychologist, which means people either tell her their life stories on airplanes, or avoid her at parties when they've had too much to drink. Neither of which she minds. When she's not writing fiction or shrinking heads, she can be found herding her children and their scruffy dog, Guapo, to various activities while trying to remember whatever she's inevitably forgotten to tell her husband. She lives in Denver, Colorado. Learn more at aghenley.com
Table of Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
